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Editor's Note: Geoffrey Norman is working on a book about college football in the state of Florida. Each week during the 2001 season, he will send a letter to Page 2, in which he will try to make sense of the personalities, events and peculiar culture that make up Sunshine State football.
Dear Page 2:
 This was a different kind of Florida football. No spreading live oaks
throwing a canopy of shade over slanted walks and spacious greens. No
libraries or bell towers; academic buildings or fraternity houses. From where
I parked, a few blocks from the Orange Bowl, I walked past buildings where
the stucco was peeling and fading, and the signs advertised rapid bail bonds
and affordable dentistry. The door to one failing building was open, and
inside, you could see a couple of pool tables and a weary man lining up his
shot. The street was thick with cars and the sidewalk was crowded with people. Not many of them looked like college kids.
The parking lots were full, however, of people who were cooking food over
grills, drinking beer they'd iced down in fiberglass coolers, and shouting
greetings to folks they recognized. College football fans, then. Had to be.
You'd recognize them anywhere, even if many of them were speaking Spanish.
One of the joys of college football, among those of us who love the game, is
the way teams take on the character of either a giant coach or the territory
that is their home. Or both. Penn State is the unadorned industry of both
Paterno and the mills. Florida State is purely Bowden, so Seminole fans
anticipate his retirement -- which has to come soon -- with something
bordering on dread. Nebraska is relentless agrarian simplicity, where you
stay with the things that have always worked -- especially big linemen.
|  | | Ken Dorsey's three TD passes were just a small part of the annihilation of Washington. |
The University of Miami is urban football and uniquely so. The Hurricanes
have never been about coaches. Miami won the first of its four national
championships in 1983. That was five coaches ago. The coaches come and the
coaches go. They do the technical things. The character of the program,
though, comes from the city, which is diverse and borderline chaotic -- a
blend of redneck swamp rats, exiled Cubans and other emigrant Caribbeans,
prosperous Latins, project gangstas, refugee Jews from New York, random
retirees, and all manner of transients drawn to the southernmost city in the country like fluid flowing to the bottom of a
funnel. Miami is a pure original. So is the University of Miami football team.
The University is a private school that has been adopted, more or less, by
the population, and fan loyalty is a sometime thing. Give them a good game,
and they will fill the Orange Bowl the way they did on Saturday night when
the Hurricanes were playing a ranked opponent. Bring Temple, or one of the
other Big East patsies, into town, and they will go to the dog track or the
beach or something. Tradition and ceremony don't rank especially high among
the urban virtues where the first question is, inevitably, "What have you
done for me lately." You can get 20,000 people, maybe, to the Orange Bowl on
sentiment. Beyond that, you need a contest.
This is what the 78,000 people who came out, pumped up and howling, expected
on Saturday night when Washington came to town. Miami is a team with a lot of
street in its character, and the feeling was that they had been "dissed" by
the Huskies. This game was payback, and we all know what that's about.
But while passions ran high and hot coming into this game, Miami and
Washington are not what you would call rivals. They had, after all, played
only twice. In the world of college football, where memories are Sicilian in
their duration, these two teams barely knew each other.
Still ... Miami's only loss last year was to Washington, and Hurricanes
everywhere believe that game kept them from playing for the national
championship. This has been translated into a kind of lethal insult, as
though Washington somehow stole something that rightly belonged to Miami
when, in fact, the Huskies also lost only one game last year and, having
beaten Miami, felt like they should have been No. 2 in the BCS sweepstakes.
Both teams, then, believed they should have been playing Oklahoma in, of all
places, the Orange Bowl, instead of Florida State -- how bitter does it get
-- a team the Hurricanes had beaten earlier in the season.
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The champion of the state of Florida will be the national champion, which is as it should be. Last year, Miami beat both FSU and Florida (in the Sugar Bowl). Having already taken care of FSU and, now, having settled the score with Washington, there is only the one piece of business to finish and avenge the old injury.
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This year's Miami team, with its freshman coach, had taken care of one piece
of that leftover business, beating FSU in Tallahassee back in October. Now it
was time to deal with Washington. For the blemish on last year's record,
certainly, but also for the other loss, in 1994, which ended a remarkable
streak of 58 consecutive wins at home. The Huskies had not merely dissed the
Hurricanes, then, they had done it to them on their own turf. Miami doesn't
really own a stadium -- not the way the Gators, say, own the Swamp or the
Doak belongs to the Seminoles. They are tenants on city property. But they
think of the aging Orange Bowl as "our house," with an extra measure of conviction and defend it with an extra degree of
ferocity.
By kickoff, the old stadium was rocking. It was one of those warm, moist
Miami nights when it sort of felt like things were going to be settled in the
old, primitive fashion, the way they would be in some of the bars and alleys
I'd walked past on my way to the stadium.
Before kickoff, the Miami seniors were introduced. Standing near the
Hurricanes bench were some former players. Two or three dozen of them,
including Bennie Blades, Cortez Kennedy, and Santana Moss. One of the
characteristics of Miami football is this loyalty old players feel for the
program. They provide the continuity that long-term coaches supply in other
programs. In the world of Miami football, they are the authority figures.
|  | | The Hurricanes gave fans of every stripe something to cheer about. |
Against Washington, however, their inspiration was not needed. The Hurricanes
got a quick pick and turned it into a touchdown. Washington sustained a drive
and -- knowing, probably, that they needed to squeeze the juice from every
opportunity -- went for it on fourth and goal. Miami held, and the crowd,
already lusting for blood, could now smell it.
For a few minutes, Miami lapsed into an indifferent style of football. Then
came the eruption. Leading 14-0 about midway into the second quarter, the
Hurricanes went into a three-minute frenzy of street ball that annihilated
the Huskies and had the fans howling into the night. Touchdown pass, safety,
another touchdown pass, interception run back all the way. Twenty-three
points in three minutes. When defensive end Jerome McDougle went into the
end zone with the pick, he did a big belly flop which was considered, by the
officials, to be unsportsmanlike. This, of course, made it better for the
Hurricane fans who booed lustily. Trash talking, woofing, in-your-face football ... this is the Miami style, just like
fly-to-the-ball defense and speed at every position.
Miami, of course, isn't the outlaw program of old. These Hurricanes can
dominate and intimidate like those teams from the 1980s and early '90s and,
assuming they beat Virginia Tech on the road next week, they will be playing
in a bowl game for No. 1, the way those teams routinely did. The short odds,
late Saturday night, were that their opponent would be the Florida Gators.
And just how sweet is that?
The champion of the state of Florida will be the national champion, which is
as it should be. Last year, Miami beat FSU and Florida (in the Sugar
Bowl). Having already taken care of FSU and, now, having settled the score
with Washington, there is only the one piece of business to finish and avenge the old injury.
Still, Pasadena? The Rose Bowl? What a long way to go to find neutral ground.
Sincerely,
Geoffrey Norman
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Football in the 'hood |  |
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